Is Big Data a Big Deal for Retailers?

1010data recently commissioned the 2014 Big Data in Retail Study. It’s our effort to learn about the state of Big Data in retail. The study is based on interviews with over 200 North American retail executives representing a range of retail sub-segments including grocery, drug, specialty, discount, department store, restaurant, hospitality and more. Respondents came from nearly every department across the retail enterprise from businesses of all sizes, including more than 50 respondents from retailers with annual revenues greater than $1B.

One of the things we weren’t surprised to find out, is that retailers are still struggling to get the insights they need to succeed. And many retailers share exactly the same struggles:

41% of respondents said that different users and different departments all have different ways of measuring the business

38% said they can’t analyze data at a low enough level of detail (e.g. SKU-store-day-transaction-customer)

And many retailers view Big Data solutions as the potential answer to their struggles. In fact, 73% of all retailers surveyed said that Big Data is either “Very Important” or “Important” to staying competitive in retail.When it came to the retail business processes that can most benefit from Big Data Technology, retail executives ranked them as follows: